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index.cpd

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Item Description

Title

Issues

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yearb_1988_053.jpg

Transcript

Mind-Benders Espouse
Their Doctrine
Every public speaker aims to either fool
or educate his audience. If someone is formally committed to a particular viewpoint,
his statements ought to be examined with
a grain of salt. If he
is not on solid intellectual ground, if
he has something
truly fundamental
to hide, he'll try to
control himself, and
not allow "the cat
out of the bag."
A Webster dictionary defines a
demagogue as
someone pretending to be "a leader
who makes use of
popular prejudices
and false claims
and promises in order to gain power."
It is strictly up to
the listener to detect contradictions
and inconsistencies
however, and to
protect his mind
from being taken
advantage of. And it's thus of fundamental
importance for an individual to develop a
trained intelligence and informed criteria
for detecting a demagogue's smokescreen
and lack of substance, as well as a skill to
learn to ask the right questions to uncover
the truth.
The main difference between a speaker
and a demagogue, as the Webster definition explains, is the ultimate goal. The
goal of a bona fide speaker is to educate his
audience, to relate a unique experience or
knowledge acquired over the years of hard
serious work. The speaker's ultimate goal
is to arouse interest in his subjects of inquiry, and he can do so only by furnishing
specific information of value to his audience, that is not commonly known. A
bona fide speaker, above all, appeals to his
listeners' intellect. He offers insights based
on solid, objective, demonstrable evidence
he is able to cite support of his views. His
goal is not to induce an action, but to make
the public informed, it will, of necessity, to
follow the proper course. Its reason will be
the force that becomes the motive.
The demagogue, on the other hand, appeals to people's emotions. He makes them
feel aroused or guilty, and tries to induce
them to act irrationally.
A person's reason is a protector of his
well-being, it is a tool by which he identifies his proper interests. A demagogue is
rated by single criteria — by his ability to
arouse people emotionally and cripple
their ability to think clearly. Emotional
excitation, particularly of fear, is the only
photo by Richard Schmidt
Photo by Richard Schmidt.
way a person can be induced to accept
demagogue's assertions on faith, without a
check of his premises, and start acting
irrationally, contrary to his best interests
and against the better judgement that
his reason dictates.
There are two
major types of a
standard contemporary demagogue:
"religious" and
"social." The goal
of a "social" demagogue is to arouse
a herd instinct, to
induce his audience
to jump on the
band wagon, to
make them
"perform" as a
group, one after another. He aims to
arouse a peer pressure that propels a
person to perform
acts that are ridiculous or unnecessary, but can be
dangerously self-
alleged benefit or
destructive, for the
"entertainment" of the group.
A "religious" demagogue, on the other
hand, assumes that his audience feels
guilty and seeks forgiveness for no apparent reason and his aim is to make it feel
more guilty, and, again, make it do something based on that guilt, usually self-
destructive. The common side of the two is
that neither can tell his audience anything
that it does not already know, or has not
heard many times over. The demagogue's
trick is not in what he says, but how he can
bring it to such level of excitation that it
loses all sense of reality and self-control,
and is "prepared" to follow a "leader" unconscious of the direction in which he
leads.
The demagogue's aim is to play on people's emotions, to capitalize on their ignorance, to exploit them for the purpose ot
gaining power. He gets that power after he
manages to gain control of his flock's emotions and can thus compel it to do things
that are demonstrably stupid just because
he has told them so.
One way to expose a demagogue is to
catch him off guard, when he inadvertently
admits what it is that he is really after.
— Fabian Vaksman
58 University of Houston